Former Sen. Bill Nelson is Biden’s choice to lead NASA
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to nominate former Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida to be the next NASA administrator.
Nelson, who served three terms in the Senate before losing his 2018 reelection bid to Republican Rick Scott, was the lead Democrat on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. He also has actually traveled to space, taking part in a 1986 mission aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia while serving as a member of the House of Representatives.
That Columbia flight was the last successful shuttle launch before the Challenger explosion.
The president’s nomination of Nelson was widely expected, and Nelson spoke regularly about space policy on behalf of the Biden campaign last year. In an announcement of the nomination Friday, the White House cited Nelson’s work as chairman of the Space subcommittee in the House, along with his leading role on space policy at the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
Ahead of the announcement, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Nelson “would be an excellent pick” to lead NASA, which is looking ahead to a return to the moon and beyond.
The nomination must be confirmed by the Senate.
—CQ-Roll Call
Amid COVID-19 outbreak in Idaho Statehouse, legislators recess
BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho House and Senate on Friday quickly moved to recess until April 6 as the coronavirus spread in the Statehouse.
House legislative leaders abruptly canceled all committee meetings Friday morning. Two House members — Reps. James Ruchti, a Pocatello Democrat, and Greg Chaney, a Caldwell Republican — tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. That makes six House members who tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week.
House Speaker Scott Bedke, an Oakley Republican, said House leaders decided to recess given that six House members tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week. He said he knows of one staffer who also tested positive.
“When you apply the contact tracing to the six and the staff that is out, we’re going to err on the side of caution here,” Bedke said at a press conference Friday. “I’m not all that surprised. We knew it was a big possibility, and we planned for it as best we could.”
But Bedke said he has no regrets about the way he conducted safety protocols during the pandemic. Masks were not mandated at the Capitol, and many state legislators didn’t wear them or keep their distance.
“I would never tell my peers what to do with their lives,” Bedke said Friday. “We all could’ve been a little more careful. I’m not saying that we did everything perfectly, but we did it pretty well.”
Republicans Reps. Lance Clow, of Twin Falls; Ryan Kerby, of New Plymouth; Bruce Skaug, of Nampa; and Julie Yamamoto, of Caldwell, also tested positive for COVID-19 in the past week, Idaho Press reported.
—Idaho Statesman
Michael Cohen should stay in home confinement for 9 more months, prosecutors say
NEW YORK — Michael Cohen must serve home confinement until Nov. 22, 2021, prosecutors say, rejecting arguments made by Donald Trump’s former fixer that he should already be done with his sentence for campaign finance violations, lying to Congress and other crimes.
Cohen sued in December, claiming that his sentence should be trimmed because of Trump’s criminal justice reform. Good behavior and participation in prison programs should have resulted in him already having completed his sentence, Cohen argued.
In new filings made public Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Rovner wrote that many of the programs Cohen completed behind bars, such as Drug Education: Freedom from Drugs, Health/Fitness, Victim Impact and Business Startup, did not count as credit toward his sentence for technical reasons related to Bureau of Prisons policy.
Cohen said it was “disgraceful” that prosecutors had waited the maximum 60 days to respond to his lawsuit.
Cohen, who flipped on Trump after serving as his right-hand man for years, has recently met with prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office in connection with a criminal probe of the Trump Organization.
—New York Daily News
Putin still wants to have that talk with Biden, Kremlin says
Vladimir Putin is still hoping for a public conversation with Joe Biden to clear the air between the two presidents after the U.S. leader’s accusation that he’s a killer, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.
The White House brushed off Putin’s initial proposal, made late Thursday in comments to state television, for a talk to be shown live on either Friday or Monday. But Peskov said Russia is going ahead with a formal request to the U.S. to hold it at “any convenient time for the U.S. president.”
“Mr. Biden has made rather unprecedented statements,” Peskov told a conference call. “In order to prevent these statements from doing harm to the already sad state of bilateral relations, Putin proposed discussing the situation, but doing it openly, since it would be of interest to the peoples of both countries.”
Biden’s affirmative answer when asked in an interview this week with ABC News whether he thought Putin was a killer sent already-tense ties to a new low. After Russia responded by summoning its ambassador from Washington, Putin fired back with a schoolyard expression that can be roughly translated as “it takes one to know one.”
He made his offer for the talk — not a debate but a discussion, according to Peskov — after a rousing speech to tens of thousands of supporters in a Moscow stadium at a celebration of the anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, an event that sparked the latest round of tensions between Moscow and the West.
Putin said he’ll be busy on a wilderness trip in Siberia this weekend, but could be available at other times.
The White House said Biden will be “quite busy,” noting that he already talked to Putin by phone earlier this year.
—Bloomberg News
